v7ndotcom elursrebmem? What be that then?

A couple of years ago an SEO competition was started by http://www.darkblue.com/. They are an internet marketing company that provide affiliate marketing solutions to ecommerce companies.

The idea was that the winner of the competition would be the person that had their web page listed a the top of Google’s listings for the phrase ‘Nigritude Ultramarine‘, on 7th June 9am GMT, 2004.

The words were chosen because up until that point there were no pages indexed by Google for that phrase, most likely because, as a phrase, it has no meaning. This meant that everyone participatingÂ was starting on a level playing field. As a result of this competition, 510,000 web pages were created that contained that fictitious phrase.

Now, it is all due to start again, as http://www.v7n.com have launched a new competition. This weekend they announced the phrase everyone would be trying to optimise for, and here it is:

v7ndotcom elursrebmem

But what does that actually mean? Well, the ‘v7ndotcom‘ part is fairly obvious to work out (if you’re really having problems working it out, first, go see your doctor, you may have a degenerative brain disease, secondly, *refer to the end of this article were you will find the explanation).

The ‘elursrebmem‘ part is a little bit trickier however. There are those that would have you believe that if you read the word backwards it reads as the phrase ‘Members Rule‘. I, however, feel that this is simply a strange coincidence.

If you really take time to look into the word, you find that there is a meaning that will not be lostÂ on those that have spent any reasonable amount of time trying to optimise websites for Google.

If we take the new word ‘elursrebmem‘ and break it down into it’s two component parts we get:

elur – from the word elul, which means outcry or cry

srebmem – derived from the word cerebrum. This is the large part of the brain that controls thought, reason, emotion and memory.

we get:

elur-srebmem – making yourself cry through the use of your cerebrum

When you consider this word in relation to the context in which it is being used, it suddenly becomes very apt.

Lets look at the typical process of optimising a site for Google. First of all you take a site, you remember everything that you have been told to do to get top Google’s listings (great titles, unique content, updated regularly, directory submissions, link building with good quality related sites, you know the rest by now), you get it indexed in Google.

A few days later you find that you are getting traffic from Google for some very specific key phrases, but that’s OK, it’s early days yet. Then nothing for the next few months, but it’s still alright, it’s just Google’s aging delay (the Sandbox).

Six, seven, eight months later, some improvement, but still not anything like what you had hoped for. You’re just not featuring for your main key phrases.

But wait there, what’s that site in position 1, he’s using hidden text and is that a doorway page? But he’s got no useful content! And it’s framed! And the navigation is completely useless! And look how many keywords are stuffed into hidden tags in the source of the page!!!!

Hello? Google? Are you there? This guys not doing it right!…. Google? …………………… Google?!

You then try to reason as to why it is, when you’ve done everything ‘right‘ and he’s done everything ‘wrong‘, he gets to be number 1 and your website is still in the high 100’s!!

You try to think about what you could do to improve things, then rememberÂ you’ve already done it all and are continuing to build links and add fresh, unique content.

Finally the emotions start coming. You get frustrated that you’re being a good, well behaved SEO and yet, the bad kids are getting away with it. You get annoyed and even angry that Google could let this happen, doesn’t their algorithm see the hidden text and recognise the doorway pages? Then you get sad, very sad that you seem to have put all this effort in for nothing.

Then you start to cry.

It might just be me, but I don’t think so. I believe that this isÂ what many, ethical, SEMs go through on a regular basis. They have a distinct case of ‘Elur-srebmem‘.

There is no doubt that eventually the quality sites will rise to the top, but the process of getting there can sometimes be exhausting mentally and emotionally.

So you can see, the phrase ‘v7ndotcom elursrebmem‘ may hold more significance than you may have at first thought. All I can say is, good luck to all those trying to compete and I hope you don’t suffer too badly from a case of ‘Elur-srebmem‘ in the meantime.

*v7ndotcom – It’s their domain name dummy! v7n.com! Get it? I really do despair sometimes!